Dan Hodges is a former Labour Party and GMB trade union official, and has managed numerous independent political campaigns. He writes about Labour with tribal loyalty and without reservation. You can read Dan's recent work here

Yesterday my good comrade Mark Ferguson, editor of the Labour List web site, told his leader it was “Time to get off the fence” and back Wednesday’s strike action. “It’s time for Miliband to be brave and bold (it’s when he’s best) and back the strikes on November 30. If we believe that the strikes are right and the government are wrong, then let us have the courage of our convictions and take that argument to parliament and to the country”, he demanded.

Wrong. Ed should be clinging to the fence like a limpet. If ever there was a need for some shrewd political cowardice and vacillation, now is the time.

For a start, those asking Ed to be "bold" aren’t being honest with themselves, or each other. Backing the strikes isn’t the brave option for Ed Miliband. It’s the easy option. Whack out a press release saying “I’m with you brother” and Ed would instantly be feted by the Labour movement. Across the land working men’s clubs would echo to the sound of pictures of Nye Bevan and Jack Jones being hauled down, photos of a beaming Rt HonMember for Doncaster North hastily nailed in their place.

And then what? According to the most recent opinion poll 61 per cent of the public have sympathy with the strikers cause. Is it likely that Ed Miliband’s endorsement will convince the other 39 per cent to come rallying to the union’s banner? “Those bloody Leftists. Bringing the country to a stand still”. “But haven’t you heard, darling? Ed Miliband’s now supporting them”. “Ed Miliband? By jove! Marjory, is there a picket line in Tunbridge Wells?”

It’s equally disingenuous to call on Labour’s leader to display the “courage of his convictions”. On this issue he has been utterly consistent. Soon after he was elected he criticized the broadcasting unions for their planned disruption of Tory party conference. He criticized the unions that went on strike last June. He turned up at TUC conference in September and told the trade union leaders to their faces he thought their industrial action was a mistake. And he did the same yesterday, branding the strikes a “sign of failure”. “You can’t please everyone”, a Miliband staffer told me yesterday. To his credit, his boss hasn’t tried to.

That’s not to say Ed Miliband has managed the politics of this dispute with aplomb. The endorsement of the Occupy movement was stupidly short-sighted, his embrace of the St Paul’s trustafarians always destined to jar badly with his decision to give the nation’s dinner ladies the cold shoulder. He is also reaping what’s been sowed since using his conference speech to define himself as the heir to Wat Tyler, rather than Tony Blair. At the time it represented cute political positioning, but say it often enough and people start to believe this people versus the predators rubbish.

But Ed Miliband has stuck to his guns. Even though one or two senior players on his own side have been trying to spike them. Alan Johnson’s support for his former trade union colleagues was slightly more muted when he was a Minister and shadow cabinet member, while Ed Balls’s ambiguous interventions over the past 48 hours indicate reports of the death of his leadership ambitions may have been premature.

But Johnson is now out of the political front line, Ed Balls operating deep behind it. The trade union leaders also have to manage the internal politics of executives that spent a lot of time and money convincing their members Ed Miliband was their man.

But the broader Labour movement has no such excuse. The calls for Miliband to lash himself to a wave of industrial action that, whilst justified, is likely to prove hugely disruptive, are naïve and self-indulgent. Self-indulgent because were they to be heeded they would serve no other practical purpose other than to make the Labour movement feel good about itself. And naïve because the only beneficiaries would be David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

Strategy and tactics have become dirty words in the modern Labour party. But surely even the most ardent Labour activist must notice that when half a dozen Tory MPs pop up at prime minister’s questions to ask why Ed Miliband is not condemning the strikers, a trap is being set.

Ed Miliband has taken on Rupert Murdoch. He’s addressed the cuts rally. Attacked big business. Not a day goes by without another swipe at the bankers. He’s condemned the war in Iraq. Milked the applause when he said he wasn’t Tony Blair. Put New Labour to the sword.

Just how Left-wing does Ed Miliband have to be before the Left is happy? I suppose tomorrow we will all find out.